


A Little Ghost-Breaking

by thequeenmeera



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Ghost Hunting, Haunted Houses, but i hope y'all enjoy anyway, i feel personally let down by my lack of ideas and horror writing chops, okay so like it's not that good, there are a lot of spiders in this fic so you've been warned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-06
Updated: 2019-01-07
Packaged: 2019-10-05 08:52:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17321846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thequeenmeera/pseuds/thequeenmeera
Summary: Gendry swears he saw a ghost when he was a kid, Arya doesn't believe him so clearly he needs to prove it





	1. Part One

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gendryxaryatrash](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gendryxaryatrash/gifts).



> Bears strong influence from The Haunting of Hill House (the novel), The Ghost and Mister Chicken, Stranger Things, and Ghostbusters. Oh, yeah and there was definitely no influence from that family trip to the Grand Canyon when I was seven.

“Wait, are you telling me that you believe in this shit?” Arya asked Gendry, incredulous.

Gendry drew himself up defensively, “Hey, you can’t tell me what I did and did not see. This was way before I ever met you.”

“So you were what, five?”

“Twelve.”

“And you trust your twelve-year-old eyes and brain to tell you that you actually saw a ghost? Not some green light –”

“– it wasn’t green this isn’t Ghostbusters.”

“Or a sheet floating in the wind or whatnot?”

“It didn’t look anything like that.”

“Oh yeah, what did it look like then?”

“It was just this sort of – form – thing, and it spoke. It was muttering something about people I’d never heard of that no one else had heard of when I asked about it but some of those names were in an old family bible that was up in the attic.”

“The ancient family bible was being stored in the attic?”

“Yeah, don’t ask me why it was put up there.”

“Look it was freaky, it was real, and I saw it four different times over that week. And that wasn’t the only weird thing that happened while we were there.”

Arya waved him off and was quiet for a minute. She grabbed her coffee and took a sip, it was starting to get cold. “Well what if we went up there this weekend and checked it out? Then I can prove to you that it was all some elaborate scheme or Joffrey’s or something.”

“Fine. I’ll make the arrangements and this weekend I’ll prove that it was all real and you’ll have to admit that you’re wrong for once.”

Arya rolled her eyes at him but the wager was agreed upon – if she could prove it was all fake he’d have to concede to her restaurant picks for the rest of the year, if he won she’d have to admit that she was wrong and come to all his boring events for the rest of the year.

The drive up to the old farmhouse was long but the scenery was lovely. It was peak season for looking at leaves and Arya made Gendry promise that they’d stop and get pumpkins and cinnamon sugar donuts on their way back on Sunday. The farmhouse was old and dilapidated, about three hundred years old Gendry told her. Considering the age, the distance from any other people, and the long dirt driveway leading to the place Arya figured that Robert Baratheon must have chosen the spot for a vacation with all his children as a way to punish the wealthier ones such as Joffrey. Though Arya had no doubts someone as messed up and vindictive as him would have found some way to entertain himself anyway. She hoped the barn cats had all steered clear of the cretin.

The boards on the porch were a bit shabby from decades of feet pounding on them, Gendry knew a surprising amount about the house and could tell her that the porch had been replaced within the last fifty years. The floors inside the house were much older though, the original hardwood had been cleaned and polished recently – obviously the owners would have had the house cleaned before the weekend guests got there. These boards were truly well-worn with slight grooves in the paths that feet tended to go often. Arya tried to avoid those spots as much as possible, making a game out of stepping in the oddest places. Gendry’s teasing her by shouting “Parkour!” every time she made a particularly difficult move didn’t stop her.

There was nothing remarkable about the three-story house Arya thought. There weren’t even any particularly old and shabby blankets or memorabilia that she was used to seeing in such lived-in places. In fact nearly everything in the place was new except for the structure itself.

“Remind me again why you thought this place was so creepy?” Arya asked her boyfriend as she peered into the disappointingly empty chest at the foot of their bed.

“You haven’t seen the root cellar yet for one,” Gendry told her as he deposited their bags in the closet. “It’s also very different at night. Even without the ghosts there’s the wind coming up off the coast and sometimes I could’ve sworn we were hearing wolves howl outside even though they were killed off centuries ago.”

“So there are ghost wolves too? Sounds like my kind of thing.” Arya flopped down on the bed, checking the firmness of the mattress. It was new and felt just right for her back. She’d been expecting one of those ancient ones that are either rock hard and squeaky or that are so worn the springs would stick into her back.

“This is a nice mattress,” Gendry sighs, “Way better than the old ones.”

Arya twiddled her thumbs over her stomach, letting herself relax for a moment. It was a nice mattress, just not what she was expecting from the age of the place. “What’s this about a cellar?” she said when Gendry got relaxed enough to start snoring.

He woke with a start and begrudgingly led her to the trapdoor into the cellar. He hadn’t been joking about it being creepy. The place was a dugout under the house, the shelves were clearly ancient and covered in cobwebs. Both Arya and Gendry avoided those because if there was any place to get bitten by a spider it was down there or in the barn. Arya got several fantastic pictures of the light shining through the cracks and spaces in-between the slats and of the abandoned tack and farm equipment. By the time she was finished it was getting dark out. The coastal wind whipped Arya’s hair into her face determinedly on the walk back to the house and Nymeria was howling for her dinner. “I think I found your ghost wolf babe!” Arya shouted back to Gendry.

“Does she normally howl for dinner?”

“Nah, but I’m not right there or anything tonight. Don’t be such a wuss.”

Their dinner was a fresh clam chowder and sourdough bread that Arya had insisted on picking up when they passed through the nearest town. Arya had developed a fondness for seafood and sourdough bread in college and while she liked cooking and was good at it she didn’t have much experience with seafood or sourdough and she figured it was worth it to get some since she didn’t get towards the coast very often. “Besides,” she told Gendry when they stopped for the food, “I’d like to spend our first night at the cabin-thing doing something other than cooking.” Gendry appeared to have gotten the wrong idea about her planned activities but she didn’t correct him, after all she might lean that way herself later.

“So,” Arya started when they’d finished washing up, “do we need to do anything special to make the ghosts come out or d’ya think they’ll come on their own.”

Gendry glared at her for a moment before answering, “I don’t recall anyone acting out of the ordinary before the ghosts showed up last time.”

“I think I saw games in one of those cupboards upstairs, do you want to play Monopoly while we wait?”

“The real question is,” and Gendry leaned forward across the table, “are you ready to lose Monopoly?”

Arya did lose Monopoly, or so Gendry insisted she would have had she not decided the game was over and packed it up by the time it became clear she wasn’t going to win. She won the drawn-out game of Scrabble that was made more difficult by a lack of cell service – “Odd,” Arya thought to herself, “I still had coverage when we got here.” But to admit that it was weird would have felt like she was conceding to Gendry’s insanity and she would not allow that. “It’s probably just because of the wind or something,” she assured herself. After they’d either played or rejected all of their options Arya excused herself to the creepy shower and with the exception of the spiders she had to wash down the drain it wasn’t so bad. Her dorm had been much worse. “At least we don’t have to use the outhouse,” Arya said to her reflection as she brushed her teeth. The thing was still standing and had been filled with very large spiders when Gendry had opened the door on their tour. It reminded her too much of her family’s vacation to the Grand Canyon when she was little. She’d gotten a urinary tract infection from holding it too long because her only opportunity to relieve herself for a five-hour period when she needed to go was in an old, creaky outhouse and she hadn’t gone because there had been a tarantula on the seat.

By the time the two of them had snuggled into the bed, Gendry’s arm thrown over her waist and Nymeria laid out along the foot of the bed, Arya had nearly forgotten that she’d come there for a possible ghost-breaking. But Gendry was already asleep and he’d sworn he and his half-siblings and cousins hadn’t done a thing when he was here before, the ghosts had just shown up during the night though they weren’t as interactive as they were in A Christmas Carol. Arya shifted so there was less weight on her arm and went peacefully to sleep.

Much later Arya began to wake, faintly aware that Nymeria was growling on the edge of the bed and Arya could have sworn she heard a long “CREEEEEAAK” somewhere nearby. It was also freezing and Arya pulled the blanket tighter around herself, snuggling back towards Gendry’s warm embrace.

“Nymeria hush there’s nothing there” Arya mumbled but the wolfdog didn’t listen. Instead she stood up and growled louder, Arya could see the whites of Nymeria’s teeth in the dim light that filtered through the window. There was nothing there in the space between the bed and the door. Only there was. Arya froze. There, in the three feet between the chair by which Arya had deposited her shoes and the door to the hallway there was a – a shape. The faint outline of a person. It was sort of luminescent like the little glow-in-the-dark stars Arya and Sansa had both once collected and stuck all over their shared room.

Then, over Nymeria’s vicious growls and little warning yips Arya heard murmuring. She couldn’t quite make out the words but they were coming from the direction of the vaguely colonial historical-reenactment womanish figure Arya could almost make out in the dim light. Arya didn’t move, didn’t speak, didn’t breathe but Nymeria kept growling, the figure kept murmuring, and Gendry’s arm tightened around Arya as he woke up. There was a ticklish sensation running up Arya’s leg and she twitched, there was a slight sting on the back of her thigh and she yelped. Nymeria lept off the bed towards the door and the figure – whatever it was – was gone.

Gendry struggled and rolled out of the bed, landing on the floor with an unmanly shriek and a thump before he stumbled to his feet and turned on the lamp. He threw back the covers and Arya turned to see what he was about. She saw a rather large spider running across the sheet before Gendry’s hand flipped it off and into the darkness towards the wall. Arya scrambled away and said shakily “did you see what kind it was?”

“No, sorry.”

Arya turned back towards the door, “Nymeria get back up here” she said, patting the bed. “I don’t know what got into her” she lied, settling back down and keeping her face away from Gendry.

“Oh sure you don’t know. I know you were awake and scared out of your little mind,” he grumbled but he climbed back into the bed and turned off the lamp. Arya did not deign to reply.


	2. Part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really wanted to make this chapter a bit longer and more intense but it's already late and I need to get to bed.

Arya barely slept that night. What had she seen? Had it been real? Was it all an elaborate prank? She wouldn’t put it past Gendry to create such an elaborate prank, her brothers might be in on it as well. There must be some device that had made it so cold and that had projected the image and another one for audio that would have been easy at least. But then again there was only one outlet in the bedroom, one plug was used by the lamp and the other was charging Arya’s phone. And the figure had been _barely_ visible. What sort of device could project an image that soft and dim? And what had Gendry done to make Nymeria attack the air? Her leg hurt and she wondered if the spider had bitten her.

Arya couldn’t take it anymore and rolled out of bed. She stepped carefully over the space the ghost had occupied before and fumbled for the light switch but when she flipped it the light didn’t come on. Cursing loudly she stumbled back around to Gendry’s side of the bed and searched for her phone. She found it just as Gendry began to stir. The light of the screen was nearly blinding but Arya turned on the flashlight app and began to search the room muttering curses and half-theories to herself. “Babe what’s wrong?” Gendry asked groggily.

“Where did you hide it?”

“Where did I hide _what_?”

“The device! Whatever you used to make it look like there was a ghost in here.”

He groaned, “Arya I told you there really is a ghost. This isn’t a prank.”

“Ha! Cute but you’re not convincing me.”

Gendry only grumbled more nonsense and flipped onto his stomach, pressing his face into his pillow.

Arya searched every nook and cranny in the bedroom. There was nothing under the bed and all that sat in the closet was their bags and cobwebs in a corner that the cleaners must have missed. Arya decided that Gendry must have moved his equipment while she was asleep. Either that or one of her brothers had followed them up and was behind the apparition, she wouldn’t put it past them. She crossed the landing and searched through the other bedroom, the linen closet, the bathroom, the entire first floor. The microwave clock read 4:53 AM when she ran out of places to search and there was not an electronic device that Arya did not recognize. The only places left were the attic and the cellar and as much as she hated to admit it Arya was not anxious to search the dark, dank, spider-infested cellar. She had not seen the attic at all the day before… “Son of a bitch!” she shouted as she raced for the stairs.

The ladder nearly smacked Arya in the head when she pulled on the trapdoor but she was still agile from nearly two decades of dance lessons, swim team, and all the other sports she’d dabbled in. She clambered up and found the chain leading to the single lightbulb, it did little to disperse the darkness. It appeared Gendry hadn’t been lying about the clutter in the attic. It was filled with ancient furniture and boxes piled high. Whatever Gendry or whoever else was pranking her with must be up there. She began a full inspection of the room. The boards creaked beneath her feet and they were covered in dust, in fact the entire room was filled with it. “That should make this easier then,” Arya muttered and she looked around her feet, searching for tracks. There weren’t any. As she moved about the attic, checking the boxes and furniture for any disturbance in the dust she found nothing. By all appearances the room hadn’t been entered in years.

“Do you trust me now?” Gendry grumbled at her when she returned to the kitchen. He was mixing up the pancake batter for her and yawning.

“No, I’m going to figure out how you did that.”

“So you admit you saw something!” He poured some batter onto the pan. Arya searched the fridge for the omelette fixings she’d brought. “Big breakfast,” he noted when she bullied her way into the cooking space, her arms full of the egg carton, cheese, mushrooms, and vegetables.

“We need our energy if we’re going to be ghost-breaking.”

“Ghost-breaking?” Gendry laughed. “The ghosts aren’t hurting anything here besides how would you know how to ghost-break a house?”

Arya glared up at him from her bowl of beaten eggs, “It’s a lot easier to ghost-break when the ghosts aren’t real.”

He flipped the first pancake onto a plate and started on the second one, “Ah, I see how it is. Are you going to call a priest to exorcise a demon from me or are you going to search my phone for the Apparition App?”

Arya returned to making her omelettes and they breakfasted in companionable silence. Gendry cajoled her into biking along one of the nearby trails. It was a long one that traversed thick woods and in a couple spots came to the edge of the cliffs that plummeted into the sea. “Getting me out of the house so Robb can set up tonight’s ghoul?” she asked while she fastened her helmet. Gendry only laughed and shook his head.

After their trail ride, a picnic at the park near the beach – all blessedly quiet thanks to it being October they took a trip into town to shop for souvenirs and cinnamon sugar donuts. Arya found a sweatshirt she liked and seashell ornaments the other women in her family might like for Christmas presents. Or at least she was sure Sansa and Jeyne would love them, her mother probably would, she wasn’t sure about Dany or Meera so she searched out a beautiful ship ornament for Dany and a moose one for Meera instead. “And that’s half of my Christmas shopping done already!” she told Gendry when they met back up.

He snorted, “As if you’re not going to find at least one more thing for your sister and shower your sisters’-in-law like you do every year. Maybe you should get something extra for Sansa now so she doesn’t end up feeling left out?” She did get something extra: a wooden sign with a quote that she was sure Sansa would gush over and a cute cookie jar. Arya also ended up getting lobster slippers for Dany and a pair of horseshoe crab earrings for Meera. Gendry was right about her showering the other women with gifts but she just got along better with Dany and Meera than she ever had with her real sister.

They spent their evening watching the local news station on mute and trying to guess what was being said until it switched to reruns of 90s TV shows which Arya was perfectly happy to watch off mute while they cuddled on the couch. She wasn’t sure she wanted to return to the cramped and creepy bedroom but the last thing Arya needed was for Gendry to think that she was actually starting to buy into his ghost prank. There was a spot on the back of her thigh that had been sore and hurting all day and she took some painkillers before collapsing into bed.

Arya woke with a start at nearly the same time she had the night before. Again Nymeria was growling and again Arya saw the faint outline of a person there. Muttering about people and chores. Arya was not going to be made a fool of. She threw off the covers and stood up. Her leg was still hurting and she felt dizzy and weak but she stood up all the same and marched right through the apparition to the light switch. Walking through the faintly glowing spot felt like walking through a wall of ice water. Arya gasped, her skin breaking out in goosebumps but she reached out and flipped the switch. Nothing happened.

The murmuring apparition turned what could have been its face towards Arya and reached out what she thought could have been a hand. Again, it felt like ice was being jabbed into her shoulder, through it even. Arya flipped the switch up and down frantically. Whatever it was plunged _through_ Arya and then there was light. Gendry had turned on the lamp and jumped out of bed. “Are you alright Arya?”

She caught her breath and scowled, “I’m fine thanks.”

Gendry put a hand on her shoulder “it’s just you look a little pale.”

“My leg hurts and I’m cold but that’s all.”

He raised an eyebrow, “So you’re sore.”

She shook her head, “No like, it feels like there’s a sore or something on the back of my leg and it’ getting worse.”

“Should I check it for you?”

She shrugged and let him. Gendry cursed, “This looks bad Arya I’m driving you to the hospital!”

“You’re what?”

“Hospital. Now.”

He didn’t elaborate until they were in the car – she’d insisted on being allowed to at least put on a sweatshirt and grab her phone before she let him lead her out of the room – “Remember the spider last night?” he started.

Arya rubbed her temples, “I sort of forgot about that until now.”

He glanced incredulously at her “Well I’ve seen brown recluse bites before and that’s what it looks like on your leg.”

And he was right. The bite was not nearly serious enough to warrant a hospital stay but she was given an antibiotic and was nearly subjected to a tetanus shot until she proved that she’d had one recently.

They left the farmhouse that day and nearly forgot to stop and buy pumpkins and the fresh cinnamon sugar donuts Arya had been promised. Gendry thought it was superfluous as they had already had donuts but Arya insisted that the donuts were different when they were fresh and bought at a pumpkin patch.

After their trip Arya refused to concede and admit that there was a ghost in that farmhouse or that ghosts were, in fact, real. Gendry likewise insisted that the whole thing had been genuine and there was no prank. As expected Arya’s brothers enjoyed being able to needle the couple into arguing over whether or not ghosts exist and never allowed Arya peace of mind once they discovered that she believed that Gendry had pranked her with the help of one of them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd love to hear your thoughts!


End file.
